


A Pyre for Mr Spider

by Ostentenacity



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: A Guest for Mr Spider, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort-Adjacent, Pre-Canon, canon-typical book burning, takes place while Gertrude is still Head Archivist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:33:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28124667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ostentenacity/pseuds/Ostentenacity
Summary: Jon happens across Gerry burning a Leitner in the Institute’s back courtyard. Friendship ensues.
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 22
Kudos: 148
Collections: Rusty Quill Secret Santa 2020





	A Pyre for Mr Spider

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissLan/gifts).



> Gertrude’s warning to Gerry is a reference to their conversation in episode 162.
> 
> A big thank you to [Ohata-kaki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ohata_kaki) for beta reading!
> 
> Content warnings at the end.

“What on  _ Earth _ are you doing?”

Gerry winces as Gertrude’s warning not to let anyone see him runs through his head. He turns, shoving his hands into his pockets and plastering a hopefully-convincing smile on his face. “Sorry?”

In the doorway to the back courtyard is a skinny man with shadows under his eyes, gray at his temples, and an expression of outrage on his face. In his hand is a pack of cigarettes: clearly, he too is trying to dodge the building’s smoke alarms. His face is vaguely familiar. Gerry has spotted him once or twice around the Institute, though he’s never spoken directly to him.

“Why are you burning a  _ book?” _ the man asks. He strides closer, fanning his hand in an attempt to clear the dense smoke billowing from the wastepaper bin at Gerry’s feet. “And an antique one, at that? You do realize there is such a thing as a secondhand—” But then he stops abruptly, face paling, eyes fixed on something in the bin.

Gerry follows his gaze just in time to watch the all-too-familiar bookplate curl and shrivel into ash. When he glances up again, the man’s outrage is all gone, and he’s scratching uncomfortably at the back of his neck. Gerry decides to take a chance. “I take it this isn’t your first Leitner?”

“Ah. No.” The man rocks back on his heels. “I, um, I suppose I—apologize. For jumping to conclusions. Do—do carry on.”

Gerry shrugs. “It’s pretty much done. Just have to wait, now.”

The man—what’s his name? Gerry must have heard it at some point. Jack? Tom?—looks back at the bin, watching the pages blacken for a minute or two in silence. Gerry is about to warn him not to try and read the words, but then he turns away, fumbling again for his cigarettes. He doesn’t open the box, though, just worries his thumb over one corner, over and over. 

“I can be out of your way in just a minute, if you want some privacy,” offers Gerry. “Just need to wait until the smoke alarms won’t go off the minute I step inside.”

“Oh! Oh, no, that’s all right, I just—” The man shoves the box back into his pocket. “Just needed some air. I should probably get back to work.”

He starts to turn back towards the door, but something makes Gerry call out, “Hey.” The man turns back, eyebrows raised. Gerry sticks out a hand. “Gerard Keay.”

The man takes the offered handshake. “Jonathan Sims. Jon.”

Is it weird to nickname himself after he’s already finished saying his name? It probably is. Oh well. “Just Gerry’s fine, then. Nice to meet you, Jon,” says Gerry. “I’ll see you around, yeah?”

Jon smiles a fleeting and surprisingly shy smile. “See you around.”

* * *

They do see each other around, after that. Not often: Jon doesn’t take many breaks, and Gerry doesn’t exactly work for the Institute (or, at least, not officially). But they say hello in passing, and every once in a while one of them will return to the back courtyard to find the other already there. 

Jon even takes Gerry up on his offer to be the one to hold the match, the next time Gerry has a Leitner to burn. There’s something bright and fierce in his eye as he watches the paper go up in flames. Gerry doesn’t ask. He’s heard rather too many of Gertrude’s statements; he certainly doesn’t want to start extracting them himself. 

Gerry has never really had a typical job before, much less a work friend. It’s sort of nice, if totally disconnected from the rest of Gerry’s life. Like a window into an alternate world, a world in which he’s an ordinary office drone, instead of… whatever he is in reality. Even so, he’s fairly sure that there is no reality in which he’s on Jon’s level of workaholism. The man seems to take the existence of lunchtime as a personal affront.

Their conversations are mostly surface-level. It’s hard for Gerry to talk about his work—or anything in his life, really—without it bringing up questions with unpleasant answers. Jon, too, has his own moments of reticence, of caginess, but Gerry is fairly sure that he isn’t nearly as involved with the power struggles of the Entities as Gerry is. So Gerry treasures their conversations as brief holidays from his day-to-day existence, and doesn’t push for more.

That is, until the day that Jon comes down to the Archives for the first time, expression closed-off, hands shaking. 

Gerry takes one look at him and steers him towards the courtyard. Jon looks like he’s seen a ghost, and Gertrude had mentioned only half an hour ago that she’d been feeling peckish. When the doors are closed behind them, Jon all but collapses onto the cast iron bench along one wall and puts his head in his hands. It’s only then that Gerry notices the sheaf of papers clutched in one hand.

“What’s going on?” Gerry asks, folding himself onto the other end of the bench. “Did something happen?” The paper is Institute letterhead. Gerry turns his head to the side, trying to get a glimpse of the top of the first page. Just as he thought—it looks like a statement form. “That’s not  _ your _ statement, is it?”

Jon laughs, a strained, unsteady sound. Gerry’s stomach sinks. “It’s not mine,” says Jon when he catches his breath. “But I can’t just—I need to—you know how to handle Leitners, right?” His eyes are huge in his face, intense and pleading.

Gerry can’t help recoiling, at least a little. “What do you mean, handle them?” he asks, guarded.

Jon brandishes the papers. “I was researching—following up on a statement, and—” He takes a shuddering breath. “I think I know where one is. I think it’s going to hurt someone, if it hasn’t already. It needs to be destroyed.” Gerry sighs an inner sigh of relief, but his expression must not have changed, because Jon wilts. “Right. I probably—I shouldn’t have asked, should I? It’s going to be dangerous, after all. I’ve no right to ask you to risk your own neck.” He stands up, papers still in hand, and starts picking his way towards the door.

“Hey,” says Gerry, and stands to follow him. Jon pauses and looks back. “Where are we headed?”

“You—you’re coming with me?” Jon’s eyes are wide.

“‘Course I am,” says Gerry. “Leitners are tricky. Best to have an expert on hand.” 

He’s aiming for playful boasting, trying to get Jon to relax and lighten up a bit. He might have overshot, though, because the gratitude on Jon’s face is almost painfully sincere. “Thank you,” he says. 

* * *

In the end, it’s one of Gerry’s easier Leitner hunts. The book in question is an illustrated children’s book in a primary school library, and the exhausted-looking librarian all but shoves it into his hands when he and Jon ask about it.

“Please take it away,” she says. “If one more of the children tries to wander off with it, I’ll go mad, I swear I will.”

“They’ve read it?” Jon asks, sounding alarmed.

The librarian nods. “They just walk right out the door. Every time it’s not on the shelf, I start worrying that this will be the time I don’t get there fast enough, and one of them will have wandered into traffic.” She shudders.

“Why not throw it away?” asks Gerry.

“I tried, once,” she says. “Little Madeleine dug it out of the rubbish bin.” Her voice wobbles. “She’d made it all the way to the corner before I caught up with her.”

“And you just took it from her?” Jon prods. “Did you open it? Start reading it yourself?”

The librarian nods, and Jon goes tense. “The first time one of the students walked out with it, I skimmed it. But it’s just an ordinary children’s book. A bit strange, maybe, and from looking at it I could’ve sworn it had more pages, but it doesn’t—I mean, it doesn’t  _ tell _ them to wander off. They do that on their own.”

Gerry can practically feel Jon gearing up to say something a bit too revealing, so he hastily asks, “And you haven’t tried to destroy it?”

The librarian stares at him. “What do you  _ mean, _ destroy it?” she asks, as though the very idea is completely alien.

“...Never mind. You really don’t mind that we’re just taking it?”

She shakes her head. “I want it out of my library,” she says. “I just want it _gone._ I don’t care how.”

A few minutes later, they’re in an alley, Jon hanging back while Gerry douses the small black-and-white cardboard square with lighter fluid. Gerry had wanted to take it back to the Institute and burn it in the courtyard—partially for old times’ sake and partially to reduce the risk of anyone happening across them and reporting the fire—but Jon had all but begged Gerry to get rid of it as fast as possible.

Gerry tosses the now-flammable book to the ground. “Do you want to—?” he asks, holding out the box of matches. Jon eyes the box longingly, but, to Gerry’s surprise, he doesn’t take it. Instead, he shakes his head, and then backs up a metre or two, sitting down on the ground and hugging his knees. Gerry shrugs and lights the match.

Some Leitners go quietly. Some refuse to burn. Some burn well enough, but put up a fight before they give in. This is one of the latter. It takes Gerry seven tries in order to actually get his fingers to drop a match before it burns down, rather than having to hastily put it out as the flame reaches his fingers. But, at last, the book catches flame, its blobby black-and-white cover slowly being overtaken by the uniform gray of ash.

Gerry sits next to Jon and lightly bumps their shoulders together. “You all right there?”

Jon shrugs, and though he doesn’t pull away, the tension on his face doesn’t leave, either. “I never thought I’d get to see this one burn. It feels… anticlimactic, I suppose. I thought it would’ve fought back. Well. Fought back  _ more.” _

“You’ve heard of this one before?”

“Read it, when I was younger,” says Jon quietly.

Gerry winces, and leans harder against Jon’s shoulder. Jon, to his relief, leans back. “Sorry to hear it,” says Gerry, feeling inadequate.

“Don’t be,” says Jon. “You’re helping me get rid of it. That’s more than anyone—” He cuts himself off by taking a deep breath. “That’s more than I thought possible.”

Jon remains tense until the book has been reduced to smoking embers, and even then, he pokes at them with a stick for several minutes before he seems satisfied. Eventually, he turns back to Gerry. “You’ve never had one come back after you burned it, have you? They stay destroyed?”

“They stay destroyed,” says Gerry. “As long as you figure out the right way to do it. It’s not always burning, but—you said this one had a spider theme, yeah?” Jon nods. “I’ve never come across a spidery Leitner that wouldn’t burn.”

“Thank you,” says Jon again, and before Gerry has a chance to react, Jon’s arms are around him, bony and trembling. Then Jon freezes and pulls back, stammering, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me—”

“Hey,” says Gerry, interrupting him. When Jon falls silent, Gerry slings an arm around his shoulders and smiles. Jon hesitantly smiles back. “Want to grab lunch before we head back? There’s a good Thai place not too far from here.”

“I’ve already been away for an entire hour,” Jon objects, but he allows himself to be steered back toward the wider street behind them.

“Do you or do you not work through lunch almost every day?”

“...I do,” Jon admits grudgingly, as Gerry knew he would, “but—”

“I think you’re well within your rights to take an extra hour off, then,” says Gerry.

“Oh, all right,” says Jon. “Just this once.” Gerry isn’t looking at him, but he can hear that Jon is smiling, and gives himself an internal pat on the back.

“Well, naturally,” Gerry deadpans back, as they turn onto the main road, Jon still under his arm. “Wouldn’t want to turn you into a rebel. I mean, taking reasonable breaks from work? What’s next? Book burning?” 

Jon unsuccessfully tries to cover his loud snort of laughter with a cough. They walk in companionable silence for a few minutes before he pipes up again. “Do you think maybe…”

“Hmmm?”

“Would you want to… do this again?” asks Jon. “Not the—not the book, I mean, though if you  _ need _ my help with one, I certainly wouldn’t say no, I just meant—It’s been nice. Getting fresh air. Actually leaving the building. Talking to a—a friend. You know.” He fidgets.

“Of course,” says Gerry easily, as he finally lets go of Jon’s shoulder to open the door of the restaurant. “I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: mentions of tobacco/smoking, implied past danger to children (no children are actually harmed), character almost burning their fingers with a match by accident several times
> 
> Tell me your favorite line, if you like :)


End file.
